Oculus has announced, via its official blog, that it will be opening up pre-orders for the Oculus Rift starting on Wednesday. With the announcement Oculus had the opportunity to inform us of the expected shipping date and price of the Rift but it looks like it wants to leave divulging that information until the last minute. So far we know that the Rift will be made available in Q1 2016 and will cost upwards of US$300.
Pre-orders for the Oculus Rift will begin at precisely 8am PST (4pm GMT) on Wednesday 6th January 2016. This launch is a big event for the nascent PC VR industry as many believe the Rift is a key device which could bring virtual reality into the mainstream. Of course pre-order customers must know more about the product/price/availability date before pre-ordering and the Oculus blog says "We'll be sharing everything you need to know to order your Rift on Wednesday when pre-orders go live".
Later in the day on Wednesday (6pm PST), Oculus founder Palmer Luckey will be answering questions during a Reddit AMA. Hopefully that will fill in any gaps in information provided by the official blog posts and other official channels. Oculus has announced that the Rift headset pre-order will be bundled with not one but two free games; Lucky's Tale by Playful, and EVE: Valkyrie by CCP.
Footage captured from VR headset
If you are interested in the Oculus Rift you might have seen the recent news concerning the delay of the Oculus Touch. On New Year's Eve Oculus said that it will ship the VR peripheral late, sometime in Q2 2016. The delay was decided upon to give time to 'perfect' the Touch peripheral, despite the "incredibly positive" feedback of testers so far. When the Touch does come out expect a "huge amount of ground-breaking new content" to be launched to make use of its enhancing VR capabilities. Early adopters will have to use an Xbox joypad for now.
Meanwhile competitor HTC's Vive VR system will be shown in more detail at CES this week. It has an expected launch date of April 2016.
